Peter Danckwerts, the owner of this site, is a participant in the Amazon US, Amazon CA and Amazon EU Associates Programmes, affiliate advertising programmes designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to all the Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR, Amazon ES, Amazon IT, Amazon US and Amazon CA sites.

My name is Peter Danckwerts. My home page, which is a work in progress, is here:www.danckwerts.co.uk. I live and work in Richmond upon Thames, Surrey, England. I am a publisher and writer at my own publishing company, Tiger of the Stripe.

I'll be very interested to see what happens to the new book from Tim Ferriss. Mr Ferriss says that the book has been banned by 700 bookshops (or 1000 according to an email I received) due to the opposition of a booktrade cabal opposed to his publisher, Amazon Publishing. He says that his marketing campaign for the book is 'a sniper shot directed at the heart of every member of the publishing oligarchy'. The irony for me is that he is relying on Amazon's near-monopoly of online bookselling to do so, just as I do.

I have no idea what The 4-Hour Chef is like but I intend to find out. It is published on 20 November and is available for pre-order in both <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0547884591/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0547884591&linkCode=as2&tag=tigerofthestr-20">Amazon US</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=tigerofthestr-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0547884591" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1477800077/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1477800077&linkCode=as2&tag=tigerukwebsit-21">Amazon UK</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=tigerukwebsit-21&l=as2&o=2&a=1477800077" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />. It is also available in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005NJU8PA/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B005NJU8PA&linkCode=as2&tag=tigerofthestr-20">Kindle Format</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=tigerofthestr-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B005NJU8PA" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />. I have no doubt that it will be extremely entertaining and thought-provoking. Mr Ferriss has a very remarkable mind. I particularly like his approach to learning languages.

I should mention that if you buy from Amazon using these links I'll receive a small payment.

It has often been said that those people who cold-call offering to 'help' you with claiming money for mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) are as bad as the bank employees who sold PPI in the first place. I suspect that some of them are actually fomer bank employees who lost their job for selling you the PPI in the first place.

I get pjoned up once or twice a day by these people. It is particularly annoying because they aren't actually at the end of the line when I answer. They are using auto-dialling and calling several people at once, so when you answer their exchange calls them back.

Being a little bit annoyed by this behaviour, I answered today with the words, 'If you're calling about PPI, I'm not interested.' Instead of being disarmed by my candour, the Asian-sounding man replied, 'Then go to hell,' and put down the phone. Those are the sort of people we are dealing with.